The One That I Want (13 page)

“Everyone knows.” Dante shrugs. “Pretty awesome. Coaching for UW.”

“Word travels fast,” I say, my vision reverberating: the U-Haul, the packing, the boxes, the damp, depressing beat of the steady rain.
What can I do to rewind that? What can I do to make that record skip, throw it off course?

“You know this town.” He shrugs. I nod because I do. There are no secrets here. “Anyway, still pretty awesome. And I don’t even care about stuff like that. I hope it works out for you guys.” He strides toward the street. “Anyway, thanks. See you Wednesday.”

His skinny frame lopes down the block, fading smaller, then smaller still, until I see his doll-sized figure exit on a side street. Though of course, I remind myself, it’s not an exit at all. Not out of here, anyway.
We’re all stuck
. For once, maybe Darcy is right.

O
n Saturday, I wake up to my underwear sagging—clinging and uncomfortable—and as I mope to the bathroom, I know this can mean only one thing. I tug down my underwear and yes, there it is, a quarter-sized stain, ruby red and nearly a perfect circle, reminding me, irrationally, of cranberry sauce. Because, I suppose, as I splash cool water over my cheeks and stare at myself for a beat too long in the mirror—my puffy, exhausted eyes, my sallow cheeks—a Thanksgiving side dish is much easier to stomach, figuratively, of course.

The house is muted, though I can hear a faint echo of a newscast humming from the guest room. My father has taken to waking early, and on the days when he’s not needed at the store, he more or less parks in the den with CNN as his only company. I know he’s attempted to woo Adrianna back—I overheard him pleading his case two nights ago when I shuffled into the kitchen on a quest for a one a.m. Nutter Butter pig-out—and I also know that she has rebuffed him, so mostly, he sits there, quiet, not asking for too much, minding his sobriety like it is something that requires constant vigilance—a science project, a soufflé.

It is already about a million degrees outside, though barely past 7:30
A.M
., and the leather on the seat of the SUV sets my shoulder blades on fire. I crouch over, leaning on the steering wheel as I drive, the town mostly still asleep, or if not asleep, mostly still stirring behind closed blinds, deserted front yards littered with baseballs, drooping petunias, the occasional smashed shards of an old beer bottle.

My dad’s house is much like I left it a few days back. The mildewy stink is now so offensive, it’s nearly visible, the humidity intensifying it like gasoline to fire. I inhale, hold my breath, and scamper through. I’d meant to come over and clean, of course, but in light of everything, it doesn’t seem to matter. In light of the fact that I might suddenly be able to see the future and not at all relish what it is that I am seeing, well, his mounds of dank socks and his molding pizzas in the fridge can wait.

The basement, though, offers reprieve. No smell, other than that pungent, stale, basement-y smell. No heat—it’s been trapped outside the cellar door. I’m not quite sure why I’m back here, what I’m looking for, only that when I woke up this morning, with the cranberry sauce in my underwear and the dread
(dread!)
of my husband returning home later this evening, I jiggered my brain into thinking that maybe I could find an answer here, start to uncover what it is that Ashley Simmons has done to me and how, maybe, I can change it back. Or how—and this may be what I want even more—how I can change what it is that I’m seeing.

The box, that old one my mother had packed up before either of us knew that she’d be gone so quickly, is right where I left it, just before I blacked out. The Tyler picture, of all of us down at the lake during that last gasp of summer, has fluttered to the floor, landing perfectly upright against a jug of old paint.

I grab it and yank it toward me, peering closer for clues. But it
looks exactly as it did before: a portrait of ruby-cheeked teenagers, inhaling the sunshine of that unmarred summer day, no consideration for the future that had yet to unfold. I toss the yellowed newspaper out of the box, digging in deeper, looking for answers. I unearth my old camera, my old 35 mm, manipulating it, examining it, an archaeologist filtering through the past to reason with the future.

I mull over my premonition of my father, of the night before he drove into that tree, before Timmy Hernandez called with the news.
Where was I?
In bed. No, no. At my bureau. Looking at old pictures.
Looking at old pictures!
I throw my hands inside the box, faster now, furiously, searching for another one, another photo that can confirm whatever just clicked inside of me. Frantically, my fingers latch onto something, and I pull out an old black-and-white shot of Luanne. The image is too close on her face, mostly nostrils and eyelashes, so she’s virtually unrecognizable. But I remember it, I remember that shot, remember handing the camera to Darcy on an early June afternoon, when the three of us were entertaining each other in the backyard, bored, making our own fun. Back before everything, back when I was still Silly Tilly. A lifetime ago. Luanne had splayed herself on a towel and fallen asleep sunbathing, and Darcy flitted over, pressing—
click
—right up into her face, just before I ran over and showered her with frigid hose water. We laughed and laughed, and Luanne pretended to be mad, but she never had it in her to stay mad for long, so pretty soon she joined us, and then we went inside for Cokes.

I stare at the picture, willing something to take me over, something other than this memory of an easier, freer life, but nothing comes.
Darcy took this one
, I think.
Darcy took this shot. Not me
.

And then I remember the Polaroid, the one of Susanna that’s at the bottom of my purse. I spin toward the stairs, taking them double, checking my watch. I have exactly eighty-seven minutes
before I have to meet Luanne for breakfast. She called last night looking for a solid, sound, hopeful voice, and I knew she didn’t trust her body to maintain this pregnancy, not when she’d miscarried three months ago, so we agreed to meet for pancakes once Charlie went down for his nap.
As if pancakes—and babies—are the answer to everything
.

Eighty-seven minutes
. I have no idea how long I was out the other two times, but maybe not that long. Or maybe longer. But I have to test it, I have to see. I find my bag nudged under the leg of the front hall console table and snap it open, fishing my fingers to the bottom, where I pull out the Polaroid in triumph.

I dash to the couch and sit and stare at the image of my best friend, depleted that day on my purple love seat, depleted, really, over the course of so many days. I stare and I sit and I stare, and I wait for it to come. I feel it then. The cramp. The pain. The jolt of the fever spreading through me, through my limbs, through my guts, through my core. And then, I lay back, and I let it happen, hoping desperately that what I see won’t ruin me; hoping desperately that I haven’t gotten myself in too deep.

I insist that Luanne get her pancakes to go. She is less than pleased, disgruntled even, but because I’m so adamant, jiggling my knee at the checkout, barking at old Marian Heckly, who has punched the cash register here since we were teenagers and whose hair has gone from brunette to faded brunette to midnight blue to steel-wool blue, to hurry the heck up with our change, Luanne acquiesces.

“You’re going to be fine,” I say to her as the car overruns the curb outside Susanna’s house. “Trust me, you’re going to be fine.”

She chases me down the walkway, my spare keys to Susie’s poking out like a joist from my fingers.

“How can you be so sure?” she says—with good reason, I suppose, though it annoys me all the same. Because since when does Luanne start questioning me, and since when is she the one to worry about anything?